Though his primary passion is undeniably the world of higher education and all associated with it, John Garvey, soon to be the former dean of the Boston College Law School, did not always envision himself as a dean. “I didn’t really have an interest in being a dean as an abstract matter,” Garvey said. “The glory of it is not great enough to make it worth while and I love being a teacher. But being the dean of a law school as prominent as BC is something that I thought was worth giving up teaching and writing books.”
Approached during the school’s dean search in the early ’90s, Garvey declined the position originally, choosing to finish projects he has started as a professor at the University of Kentucky. “At the time I said no, but it was always in the back of my mind,” he said. So, when Aviam Soifer stepped down as dean in 1999 and Garvey was once again offered the opportunity, he came to BC.
When Garvey leaves this week after spending 11 years on the Newton Campus to assume his new position as president of Catholic University, he will leave behind a legacy that explains in part why BC Law is a tier-one, respected law school.
Upon coming to BC, Garvey had set three goals for his tenure. “One was to make us more academically ambitious to improve our scholarly profile in the legal community,” he said. “The second was to raise more money for the law school and the third was to become more conscious of how to fulfill our mission as a Catholic and Jesuit institution within the University.”
In terms of academics, Garvey succeeded in hiring 20 new faculty members, marking a 40 percent turnover in faculty from the late ’90s until now. “They have been almost entirely junior faculty who are just starting their careers or at the very beginning,” he said. “I think they’ve been a wonderful infusion of new ideas and new ambitions for the institution, so I think that has set us on a really good path for the next decade.”
Fundraising has also grown significantly under Garvey’s direction. When BC Law obtained independent fundraising authority nearly 20 years ago – making it the only college within the University to have such power – they began the difficult process of boosting alumni donations and major gifts. Now, following the tenure of deans such as Soifer and Garvey, the fundraising efforts of the school are finally hitting their stride.
“It takes a while to get something like this underway,” Garvey said. “To get your alumni used to the idea of having the responsibility of supporting the school – it’s a process where starting friction is greater than flying friction.”
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